I guess it was our way of admiring all of them. They seemed grown-up and sophisticated.

One senior always smiled back, usually looking just a little puzzled, like, who are you? She had long brown hair—so pretty. She was short like me, and that was cool. Then there was her smile, soft, faraway. Was she tired? I thought maybe so.

She married a boy from my cousin’s class, and when they became our scout leaders, I found out her name was Pam.

Scouts was fun. Not to brag, but I used to tie a double half hitch in no time flat.

Their house was a few blocks away from campus. She invited me over: “Just come on by any time.” I liked to walk there after school and have Dad pick me up when he got off work.

We spent afternoons in her kitchen, cooking and chatting. She listened intently, and when she spoke, she didn’t treat me like a child.

Her husband called her “My Girl.” One time they told me the story of how they met. It was a little embarrassing. I mean, you know, mushy mushy.

One day she told me she was going to have a baby. For the next few months she was pretty sick, and those tired smiles from 7th grade finally made sense. She said it was this thing where your body attacks itself.

I lost contact when I left for college, but I saw them again years later. He still called her “My Girl.” They had a house full of adopted kids, some with special needs. And she listened to each one, the same way she used to listen to me when I was a teenager.

Back in 7th grade, I didn’t know her name. I didn’t know her career plans. I didn’t imagine a house full of children who needed exactly that kind of attention.

All I knew was that when I said hi, Pam noticed me.

It turns out that was worth admiring.

If you’d rather watch than read, the video is right here. To read, keep scrolling.

The story

I’m sitting at the picture window with my nose pressed against the glass. It’s late afternoon on a rainy Christmas Eve in 1964. My cousins and aunts and uncles will be here soon, and I’ve been pestering my mom all day, wondering when they will arrive.

The table is set, the decorations are out, and Gramps is in his rocking chair, twiddling his thumbs back and forth, occasionally muttering to himself, “Yah, yah, yah, yah.”

His popcorn pan is out and ready. Dad pulls out matches to light some candles. Mom opens the record player and puts on a Christmas album.

“Nance, get your nose off that glass! Now I’m going to have to clean the window all over again.”

As the house fills with relatives, I sit in the corner and take it all in. The swirl of voices, the growing pile of presents, Aunt Esther’s date bars, and some funny-looking green Jello salad.

Cousin Jo sits next to me. We don’t know it yet, but Aunt Helen will be giving us each a Barbie doll with a full wardrobe that she sewed.

Gramps turns on the stove. He adds oil and corn kernels to his favorite popcorn pan and starts shaking it back and forth. He’s going to do this until the popped corn pushes the lid right up off the pan.

Somebody pulls out the photo album with picture of Gramps as a small child. One of the older boys laughs. “Look! Gramps is wearing a dress!”

Our aunt shushes him. “Please don’t say things like that when your grandfather is just in the next room.”

We open presents and eat food, and somebody brings Gramps his violin. When he was young, he played the fiddle in local dance halls, and his favorite song was In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree. He’s pretty rusty, but if you already know the melody, you can sort of tell that’s what he’s trying to play.

As the evening winds down, people get their coats and say goodbye. Mom clears the table, Dad whistles as he puts wrapping paper in the trash. I can feel my eyes getting really droopy.

Tomorrow I’ll play with my new Barbie doll, but tonight I’ll sleep and dream of cousins and candles and Aunt Esther’s magnificent date bars.

The Details

I’ve always remembered how those Christmas Eves felt, but over the years the details became fuzzy. So when I wanted to tell this story, I asked my cousins. The result was long text message full of memories.

Three things helped me with the details:

1. I asked more than one person. Each had different memories, and they fit together like puzzle pieces.

2. After struggling to make sure every little detail was correct, I realized that this story was about the way the evening felt, not the specific details, so there is not need to stress over whether the jello was green or red.

3. I looked at pictures while I was asking questions. Pictures spark memories, if you have them. We almost didn’t!

That was one of the last Christmas Eves I remember before Gramps started setting photos on fire. His mind began to slip away, and I guess this just seemed like a good idea.

Where did he get the matches, anyway? I’m not sure, but Mom had to sneak into his room when he was out and round up all the photos and matches.

I still remember the time he found a stray photo and improvised with the stove. He turned the burner on high and held the photo right up against it.

Great job with the family heirlooms, Gramps. Mom was thrilled.

I like remembering Gramps before that, back when he made the popcorn. The detail all of the cousins remember most is his popcorn pan. It was always there in his kitchen on special occasions.

What does your family remember? Did you have a holiday object that was always in the room?

Merry Christmas, and I’ll see you again soon.

When I first got the email from 23andMe, it landed in my junk mail, and honestly, I thought that’s what it was. Junk. I’m not sure why I even opened it, but I did.

It was from a man named Roger, who was looking for his father’s family and seemed prepared for disappointment. “You’re probably related to my mother’s people.” He added, "I know nothing about my father. I hope he came from a good neighborhood." He left his phone number.

Well, that was a good teaser. Buddy, you should get a job writing hooks for YouTube! So I logged in to get a closer look. And then I called, because Roger was my 2nd cousin, and it looked like that relationship was through his father’s family.

What followed was a five year acquaintanceship. This video was done very quickly for Facebook, just a few hours after his son let folks know that Roger passed away. For some reason I didn’t have my regular equipment and made this on my iPhone, which kept auto-focusing. But I decided to leave it as-is, because it captures a specific moment in time.

One of the interesting things about stories like this is figuring out what to share and what not.

I have several family DNA stories that will never see the light of day, at least not without names being changed. In videos, I use a blur effect to remove details I don’t want to show. And the only full name I used here is my mother’s cousin, who is no longer alive. His name is a key part of figuring out the relationship to Roger, so it stayed in. Since I did this originally for our family and friends, they would have found it strange if I had given him a fictitious name.

Not only did Roger introduced me to his own family, he also helped me get acquainted with a set of cousins that I only knew by name prior to his call. I think you could say that Roger expanded my world. And I’ll be forever grateful.

Moral of the story: Check your junk mail?

RIP Roger. I’m glad you found me.

By evening I’m so tired of coughing I wouldn’t mind going to bed right after dinner. Deja vu!

I remember when I actually did that, back in seventh grade. This September feels a lot like that one: sad, uncertain, but full of exciting possibilities.

Back in ’73, the news blared nonstop about Watergate. Gas prices were soaring. Junior high classes were held in trailers by the high school, a new location with teachers I didn’t know. So daytime was uncertain and exciting, but evenings were just plain lonely.

My nearby cousins had all moved away. My younger brother had been lost in an accident the year before. Mom and Dad did their best, but they were sad and quiet. I would come home from school and by 6:30 just go to bed. There was nothing else to do.

But then Cousin Tim came to stay with us.

He was six years older and taking college classes. He played the flute, and one day he came out of his room with some music. “Hey, can you play this?”

It was piano accompaniment. I fumbled through it, made a lot of mistakes, and he said it was perfect. Just what he needed! And also, would I have time to do this with him every evening? Well, it might cut into that 6:30 bedtime, but I thought maybe I could work him in.

Then he gave me his old Peter, Paul, and Mommy LP. And a few days later, he pulled out a hand-me-down guitar. He didn’t need it anymore. Would I like the old one? Um, yes. And would I like him to show me the chords for Puff the Magic Dragon? Well, duh!

These days you see the phrase “This changes everything” about once every 12 seconds. You can find Substack notes of me making fun of its overuse. But hey, Cousin Tim really did change everything for me.

Music went from something I had to practice by myself to something we did together.

And once you’ve learned a few chords, you realize it isn’t that hard to come up with a little melody. And if you doodle on your colored notebook paper for long enough, you can come up with simple lyrics.

And then, if you are going to start singing with your guitar, why not pay attention to the girls who get praised for their good voices? They all have one thing in common: vibrato. Can you get some of that? Look deep inside. It’s in there somewhere. Just close your eyes, and listen to yourself, and breathe the way the choir teacher said to breathe.

And once you’ve found that vibrato, you can take the guitar to school and start meeting up with those girls. Suddenly, you have new friends. Teachers are asking you to do special music for events. And you’re definitely not going to bed right after dinner anymore.

Which I still really wanted to do this week, but I resisted and got busy sorting through old documents instead.

Which is how I ended up logging into Evernote the other day—yes, Evernote, which I thought had gone the way of floppy disks—and there it was: a song my daughter wrote when she was nine. AND I HAVE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR THIS!

The melody is hers, then I helped with the chords. She was enrolled in Yamaha guitar lessons at the time, so once she understood which chords went with which part of the melody, she was ready to go. The song, called Dare to Discover Peace, won 3rd place in a little school competition back in 1995.

Last year I wrote my own lyrics about her writing that song and set it to music using Suno AI. So yes, a song about writing a song. Very circular. I posted an early version of it here using what was then version 3.5 of the product. Early days! So I thought I could redo it now with a newer version, inspired by the sing-along quality of Karen Carpenter's 1973 classic, Sing. (Oh, Karen, I still miss you!)

This little Suno Song is not a concert-ready production, but my little granddaughter will enjoy it. My seventh grade guitar tunes in my room weren't concert-ready either, but they were life-transforming.

I don’t have a guitar right now, and my vibrato is distinctly “old lady,” but maybe Suno is my new hand-me-down guitar.

Listening to it today, the way this week has been going in the states, and the wars that continue in other parts of the world, I think my daughter’s song is apropos. It’s simplistic but gets to the heart of things.

Don’t fight. Talk it out. That’s what peace is all about.

Was there a time when music made a difference in your life? Or a cousin? Let me know in the comments.

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His mom put it on the fridge, I took a photo, and now—ten years later—it popped up in my notes: The Rainbow Ducks. And before anyone gets worked up about rainbows or hidden agendas, let’s just agree that sometimes a five-year-old draws a duck and calls it a Rainbow Duck. End of story.

Anyway, I used Google Gemini’s Storybook Gem to turn the Rainbow Ducks into a story for his three-year-old sister, and it was actually a lot of fun. But let's back up—I wasn’t actually planning to make a book when I started. I was just joking around with my grandson. He's 15 now.

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The Ducks Learn to Sing and Dance

I sent him one of the original pictures, jazzed up with Google Veo. Google Veo is Google's text to video tool. It can also turn an image into a video. This was made with version 3, which now includes sound, and it made the ducks dance and sing a little ditty.

Me: "Kinda lame, huh? With the weird song?"
Him: "Actually that is peak."

What do you think. Is this peak? What does that even mean? Peak.

(I had to look it up—turns out peak is alpha slang for top-tier awesome, the absolute best. Maybe. I think.)

That got me wondering what his little sister would think, because one of the things I've learned from the parade of kids and grandkids coming through my life is this: before you hit them up with tales about life on the homestead or civil war or ancestors who sailed across the sea, the stories they want to hear first are more like "When Mommy was a Little Girl" or "When Big Brother was My Age." So...

Playing with Google's Latest AI Toys

Google seems to be putting out fun tools left and right these days. One of these is Gemini’s new Storybook Gem. It's a free tool you can find by logging into gemini.google.com and clicking on “Explore Gems” on the left side menu. From there, you just click on the Storybook Gem to get started.

What I like about it is the flexibility. It can write a story for you from scratch if you want—just give it a subject and let it go. I'm not sure how that would turn out. It probably depends on your prompt. The more details you give it, the better the story. But you can also write the story yourself and tell it to use your exact words, which is what I did.

I also uploaded the photos of the ducks that I saved from the refrigerator. And here's what I pasted into the prompt area:

Create an illustrated children's storybook for a little girl. Use my pre-written story text exactly as I've written it. The story should be about two mischievous rainbow ducks that come to life from a drawing. Use the uploaded pictures of the ducks as inspiration for the illustrations. The story text is, "One sunny afternoon, a little girl named Chloe was playing in the living room. Upstairs, big brother Luke was on his computer. Mommy was folding the clothes. Daddy was in his office. The house was very, very quiet..."

And it goes on from there to have the Rainbow ducks sneak into the house when Mommy lets the dogs in, and then they just cause all sorts of trouble: Sneak snacks, play in the bathtub, go in big brother's room and throw his clothes all over. (Well, his clothes are already thrown all over, but we won't tell.)

I pasted that, clicked the button, and it generated the illustrations.

Here's the link: https://g.co/gemini/share/7b36aa379d8c (I'm not sure how long this link will keep working. I assume it's now shareable for the foreseeable future.)

This is not bad at all—there's even a voiceover to read it to you. You can choose a higher pitched voice or a lower pitched voice. It's definitely an AI voice. We all love those, of course.

From Digital Fun to a Real "Book Book”

Screen time is not great for small children. So I got to pondering how I could turn this into a printed book. Fortunately, there is an option to download as a PDF, so this was a great opportunity to pull it into Canva, which makes it easy to modify and resize.

First off, why not add a page with photos of the original Rainbow Duck? Next, I had Canva resize to 8x6, printed it on card stock, got out my scissors, and cut it to fit a little 4x6 photo album.

Voilà... a tiny book—perfect for carrying in go-bags for long car rides. A treasured keepsake for years to come.

Ha!

This is a test run to determine exactly how sturdy something like this would need to be. I figure it doesn't replace a real book. It's more like a fancy greeting card from Grandma.

It might last a few weeks, though?

What family art, story, or word-twist mishap have you turned into a project lately? Anything super peak? Share in the comments—I'd love to hear your ideas.

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Links:

Google Veo - as of August 2025, gemini.google.com has version 3 with a subscription. You can also try out version 2 for free at aistudio.google.com

Google Storybook - free to anyone with a google login at gemini.google.com

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I found a poem I wrote in 1994. It's about Georgia thunderstorms. And if you’re from my part of the world, you know drizzle. But you don’t know this.

Georgia thunderstorms start with the wind. It whips up, and then come the big drops of rain. You start listening then, because next there may be thunder in the distance, but there might also be sirens. Tornado sirens.

If you hear them, you gather your family, and the dog, and you head for your safest room. Maybe that's the basement, or a bathroom with no windows. You may be there a while.

Hopefully the dog won't fart.

So, what do you do with a thirty-year-old poem and a memory like that?

Well, if you're me, and it's what I'm officially calling a "Suno summer," you decide to turn it into a song. My mission was to give this stormy memory a Doris Day sound—pure, uncomplicated sunshine. But how do you explain "uncomplicated sunshine" to an AI?

This is where I turn to Travis Nicholson. He seems to know the magic words for this stuff. I’ve highlighted his Medium article in the past, but now he has a low-cost PDF on Gumroad. I got that, and with it, I got my uncomplicated sunshine! (links below)

If it was just rain, my kids would pull on swimsuits and run shrieking into the downpour. "Mom, come ON." They never understood why I preferred the doorway.

Looking back, that doorway was more than just a dry spot. For much of ’94, I was the only adult on duty. It was my post, and sometimes it was a lonely one.

Back then I never dreamed I would be able to turn this poem into a song someday using just a computer. I did once dream that someday the tornado warnings would show up on our clock radios. Hm …

I had to rework the old poem into lyrics, which was a clumsy process. I’m not a poet or a lyricist. But it was a welcome distraction for a tired brain.

And if the idea of writing lyrics makes you want to run for the hills, don’t let that stop you. Suno can write them for you (though you might want to give them a once-over). There are also specialized GPTs on ChatGPT designed to help with the whole AI songwriting process. Just do a search for “Suno” or “AI Music.”

So, how did the AI handle it? I’ve uploaded the finished song, "Georgia Thunderstorms” up at the top of the page.

And I’m making a note to write a story for my grandkids, about the times their mom and uncle played outside in the rain in their swimsuits. It will go in the family canon, along with the tale of the farting dog.

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LINKS:

• I’ve mentioned Nicholson’s Medium article before: https://travisnicholson.medium.com/complete-list-of-prompts-styles-for-suno-ai-music-2024-33ecee85f180

• But now he has some low-cost PDFs for sale on Gumroad as well. Yes, I will be his sales person. No, he has no idea who I am. That’s ok. https://tmnicholson.gumroad.com

Read It, Then Un-Read It! Music Produced by Suno AI. As for the lyrics? Nobody takes credit.

I’ve been on a summer hiatus… taking a writing class and working a lot.

But life keeps swirling around me: graduations, college adventures, funerals, new drivers, first office jobs. And also, friends and family have been collecting unfavorable health diagnoses faster than my grandson can collect his favorite Pokemon cards.

Welcome to the summer of 2025.

I’ll return shortly with something more substantial, but in the meanwhile, here is a topic that I think warrants the attention of anyone who has recently been sitting in a waiting room, hearing bad news, or looking up the definition of a new medical term on WebMD.

It’s a song about the history of one of our most essential modern bathroom products, and something you start to notice in college, when it doesn’t just magically replace itself on the holder.

It started while I was working on a fun little story with my granddaughter, who is headed to college. I was showing her how to use the "Deep Research" tools built into Grok, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.

I wanted to show her before somebody else did, so I could point out ways not to use them.

(They’re cool, but they don’t replace learning how to do your own research. They're a good place to get an overview and some starting links, but trusting them completely would be like trusting your kid brother when he swears he hasn’t read your diary.)

Anyway, we were doing that and hey:

Why not run a report on the history of toilet paper?

Because we are silly people, and we were reminiscing about 2020.

I remembered how my mom always bought TP when it was on sale. She stashed it in every nook and cranny! If the 2020 shortages had happened on my mom’s watch, it wouldn't have bothered us a bit. She had enough pink and blue rolls to last for months.

Why is it all white now?

And didn’t the grandparents use something like the old Sears catalog in their outhouse? I heard something about that. So that’s what I asked Deep Research to find out.

The history is pretty wild.

Johnny Carson created a mini TP shortage in 1973 just by cracking a joke on his show. That was back when colored TP was popular, but it faded out because it was bad for plumbing, and I think people stopped looking at it as a decorator item.

And yes, the Sears catalog was good for the old outhouse days until sometime in the 1930s. That’s when Sears started using glossy paper, which really isn’t very absorbent. Fortunately, about that time, new paper rolls started coming out that were splinter-free. Amen. Hallelujah.

Let’s all raise our voices in praise of splinter-free!

So when we went to the Cancer Center yesterday, I thought I would work on this video while I waited. I had my script written from all these great facts. Before the Sears Catalog, there were, of course, the corn cobs you’ve probably heard about, and, well, smooth stones. Yup. That’s what the report says. I did check the sources.

But it was taking too long!

I was there while my family members were in talking to the doctor. Doctors are on the clock. They like to move you along! If they were in there this long, it could not be good news! And I thought, well, this lady likes jazz, knows about older times firsthand, and might enjoy some light-hearted fun when she gets out of that appointment.

So, after I paced for a while and visited the ladies’ room twice, I sat down, cranked up Suno, and started working on this song.

It’s a masterpiece, don’t you think? :)

I’m dedicating this to J & L. You know who you are.

Down with carcinoma and CIDP ... and up with jazz classics on the history of TP.

(Video will be out on Sunday.)

What has summer been like for you? Tell me about it down in the comments. Particularly if you researched something silly!

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For more on Johnny’s joke, see this hilarious thread on X from RetroNewsNow:

https://twitter.com/RetroNewsNow/status/1075630887792984064

Oh, while I’m thinking about it, I haven’t been writing but I have put out a few videos, here they are, in case you’re a video person:

For the people who want to write some family stories but have put off starting because they don’t know how to make family trees. You don’t need a tree to get started. You can worry about that later.

Some ideas on how to get started. And a story about Natalie Goldberg and “Writing Down the Bones.”

A story about confidence. And don’t you love jello? (Me either.)

A fun way to use NotebookLM with your book notes. I used it to find my favorite writing exercise.

I wrote an article about this a while back, and then I thought, hey, let’s get my cousin Mark McGuffin and my youngest granddaughter in here and pull up an old letter from our great uncle.

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I just got your letter. I know you wrote it to Cousin Carol 41 years ago, but her daughter just found it the other day. So now I get to read it. I’m surprised you wrote this letter because the two of you talked on the phone a lot, but maybe it was because you drew this little pattern on the back.

Even on the phone your hands were never still, always doodling or folding the corners of the paper. I could imagine Carol at the other end with a long phone cord walking around her house straightening up while she talked. Never still, either of you. My daughter is the same. Doodling. Folding the paper. Never still.

July 29, 1984. I made Nancy a nursing dress at her request, and when people saw it they wished they could buy dresses like that.

Nineteen eight-four. Wow. You were the same age then as I am now. I’ll never forgot how you could sew things that fit me perfectly, even when I wasn’t around, even with different patterns.

What was your system for this? I mean, my daughter looked for her keys for several hours one day until we found them in the fridge. And I have a sign on the door listing all the things I need to remember every morning (phone, hearing aids, keys!) So how did you manage to write down my measurements and not lose them?

I’m making another one, different from the first. She starts back to work next week.

I wish you were here now, because I have so many questions. For instance, where did the nickname Carolina Cottontail come from? When did you start calling Carol that? Did you know that’s my favorite family nickname?

I haven't spent much time on patterns or figuring how to do it.

At this point in the letter, your dreams should be filled with visions of nursing dresses, your waking hours occupied with nothing but experiments and drawings and conversations with nursing mothers, perhaps some scouting trips to local maternity stores. Hyper-focus is a family tradition, and you aren’t participating. Why not? Share your secret. Please! This is amazing.

If they could be fixed so there is a ruffle or flap to cover the child while nursing that would be better than what I did.

Do you really think anybody could have made something better? Because those dresses were superb. You were a genius with that sewing machine. I mean, you were a little overboard with your sewing speed. Zoom Zoom, am I right? But yes. Just plain genius.

Zippers are not necessary if the opening is made right - maybe a little fuller and fastened with a small button or something.

I think Carol was looking for money making ideas, so you sent her one. And it feels like you’re saying, “Here’s an idea. I have faith in your ability to take it, improve on it, run with it.”

So here’s my next question. When did you stop hovering?

The opening could be up and down or crosswise maybe even a slant - anyway that's something for you to work out.

Just like that. You muse for a few moments on possible patterns, then you just … let go. Carolina Cottontail gets to figure it out. You don’t even say you’ll call in a couple of days to see how she’s coming along!

That’s so different from your 40-year-old self, with the anxious checking at night to make sure I’m still breathing. Or your 55-year-old self, staying up to make sure I got home safe from swing shift.

When did you break that pattern of anxiety? When did you develop this system of relaxed detachment?

I don't know if patterns are patented or not or what. Keep it private so no one steals it from you. Shirley.

And then just a little advice there at the end. Because you knew your Carolina Cottontail had just a little trouble keeping a secret. She was the kind of kid who would give you a wrapped present and tell you what it was while you were opening it. Silly cousin.

I'm looking at the pattern you sketched on the back. Quick pencil lines: “ruffle,” “opening and ruffle,” “under pocket.”

Your handwriting speeds up as you go. No careful organizing, no color-coding, just pencil moving as fast as your thoughts.

All those years I thought you developed some magical way to keep track of things. But maybe the system was simpler. Keep your hands moving. Make something useful. Pass it on. Let go.

Forty-one years later, and I can still see your mind racing across the page.

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For a little extra fun, here’s an ElevenLabs rendition of Mom reading her letter using the cloned voice I made from recordings I had of her voice.

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The standard answer for the last couple of years has been, “Yes, but you’re going to need to play with it for 10-20 hours to really understand how to move forward.”

But maybe that’s not the case anymore. Newer versions of these products can think, access the internet, write code, and conduct research.

So last week at Chronicle Makers, when Denyse Allen offered up a new prompt designed to help AI newcomers, the timing seemed just right. Her promise? Use this prompt and avoid the 20 hours of blood, sweat, and tears.

You can see the full prompt at Chronicle Makers: The Worst Advice Genealogists Keep Getting.

I haven’t asked Denyse to outline her vision for the prompt, but my guess is she’s in favor of education and guidance. She just doesn’t see much point in trial and error.

The idea is to give it information about what you are researching and get back some pointers on where to focus your research next.

It starts by asking for:

• Family lines you’re researching

• Records you’ve already found

• Sources you’ve consulted

• Key findings and breakthroughs

• Dead ends and challenges

The first thing you may be thinking is, wow, ok, this will take some time.

Well, yes! The good news is, genealogists know how to pull research together. We do this for fun on the weekends.

So hey, I’m game. Let’s give this a try.

Don’t Try to Feed it Your Whole Tree

Here’s where it makes sense to step back and think about goals. I’m not going to try to dump my whole family tree in here. In fact, to test this out and get accustomed to what it does, I’ll start with one person, my grand Uncle Orin Carver.

Orin was Grandpa Orland’s older brother. (Why name one boy Orin and another boy Orland? Didn’t that get confusing when it was time to call the boys to dinner?)

I don’t have much information on Orin, just one picture, a birth date, a couple of census sitings, and some rumors. Oh, and he often gets confused with another man named Orin Hugh Carver. There are some leads I haven’t followed, so we’ll see if ChatGPT picks up on those.

I’m particularly interested in a news article that says he was in an asylum for 18 months. The family is inclined to believe my grandfather had a mental illness, and there are hints of bipolar disorder in Great Grandma’s family, which leaves us curious. Sadly, the treatment options were not very advanced 100 years go.

I decided to compile my information directly out of Ancestry.com and then add a few notes. I didn’t worry about feeding in the source images, opting for transcripts instead.

I could have pasted this information into the chat box directly after the prompt, but I chose to attach it as a separate file. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Grok all have the ability to attach files.

Below you can see our Q&A and the plan it provided. Note that I have not yet attempted to follow the plan and cannot confirm whether all of the leads are correct. However, it seems like a solid starting point.

It picked up on the Washington death certificate, which I think is the logical next lead, and gave instructions for finding it.

If I were brand new to AI?

Now, how would this work for me if I were brand new to ChatGPT? Honestly, I would fumble a little bit. That’s just me.

I would probably want a couple of hours to play around, just so I could understand how ChatGPT works, the settings, the tools, how to attach files, when it makes sense to start a new chat, and so on.

But after that? I could use this prompt and get going.

The other thing to adjust to with these AI assistants is the idiosyncrasies. Each product has its own quirks, which change from model to model.

• They may provide incorrect guidance, such as links to places that don’t exist.

• Some days their output is less than useful, and your best bet is to start a new chat.

• If you provide links to web pages they can’t read or can only partially read, they will sometimes pretend they actually read them and then try to fake their way through the conversation.

But there’s no reason you can’t use the new, focused prompt while you are learning to deal with these idiosyncrasies.

What if you have a lot more data?

If you have a lot more source material to attach than I did here, you can attach multiple files instead of putting all of your information in one file.

Behind the scenes, these files can be added as PDFs or they might be stored in your Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive.

Another interesting option for paid subscribers would be the “Projects” feature in both ChatGPT and Claude, which lets you keep all the files associated with a particular project together in one place.

My thoughts on the prompt so far?

I’m a fan. Get your research together and give it a try. And remember, start small. You don’t need to dump your whole tree in there!

Here’s the conversation with ChatGPT

Let’s clarify your goal for this research:

1. Primary Goal: What specific outcome do you want? Is it confirming a death date, proving the asylum claim, separating him from Orin Hugh, or something else?

   My answer: I am trying to trace his life in general, so please tell me which of these would be the easiest to start with.

2. Time Period of Focus: Are you most interested in the 1880s asylum period, the 1910s (California mention), or the 1925 possible death?

   My answer; I am interested in them all. However I'm not terribly convinced that he was ever in California, any more than I'm convinced he was killed in a prairie fire or living in Gresham.

3. Geographic Focus: Are you focusing on California, Iowa, or Washington? Or just trying to follow wherever the trail leads?

   My answer: I am trying to follow where the trail leads. I have seen no clue of him in California.

4. Family Line Priority: Are you researching Orin primarily because he’s a direct ancestor, or because he’s part of the broader Carver family puzzle?

   My answer: He is part of the broader Carver family, my grand uncle.

5. Personal Interest: Is there a particular reason you want to pin down Orin’s story — family mystery, local history tie, potential descendants?

   My answer: Because I don't know anything about him other than he was Uncle Nin. Interested in his medical background.

You can jot those out in a quick reply, and I’ll move on to the planning stage once I have that.

Why the 1925 Washington lead is the easiest opening move

• The Washington Department of Health Death Index, 1907-1960 is fully searchable (and free) on the Washington State Digital Archives. It gives the certificate number you’ll need.

• Washington now hosts scanned death certificates to 1996. If Orin’s certificate image isn’t online yet, you can order a non-certified copy for $25 from the DOH by mail or online. Turnaround is fast.

• Eastern State Hospital retains historical patient files, and their records office answers genealogical requests.

• A death certificate plus a patient file (if it survives) should pin down residence history, marital status, burial place, and—in many cases—the admitting hospital or court that sent him there. That can propel you backward into earlier censuses, voter rolls, or court commitments.

Step-by-Step Research Plan

1. Pull the 1925 death certificate

   Use the Digital Archives index to grab the cert #, then request the image or order the copy.

2. Request Orin’s Eastern State Hospital patient file

   Email him.esh@dshs.wa.gov with his full name, death date, and certificate number. Ask for admission, discharge, and burial data. Some files include next-of-kin correspondence.

3. Search Spokane-area newspapers July 1925

   Look for an obituary or burial notice that might list surviving relatives or a transfer of remains.

4. Rule out California by confirming 1914 wording

   Locate the exact 11 Jun 1914 Verdigre Eagle article on Newspapers.com or Chronicling America. If it simply says “in California,” treat it as unverified until census, city-directory, or voter-roll entries appear.

5. Re-examine the Independence, IA asylum lead

   Contact the Independence Mental Health Institute records desk (IndeMHIMedicalRecords@hhs.iowa.gov). Ask whether admission registers 1885-1890 include an Orin/Orien Carver born 1858-60.

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The File I Attached
Note that I’ve added XML tags around each piece of information (the brackets.) This isn’t really necessary, but it will allow me to refer to each record by name if I want to discuss it with ChatGPT. I can say things like “The birth date in <1880 Census> vs the birth date in <1870 Census>” and it will be very clear what I mean. 

<Basic Information>
Name: Orin Carver
Known Family Nickname: Nin
Birth: 1859 in Wisconsin
Death: unknown
Father: Cyrus Hoyt Carver
Mother: Mary Jennette Allen
1870 - Residence La Valle, Sauk, Wisconsin, USA
1877 - Family moves to Verdigris, Antelope, Nebraska, USA
1884-1886 Perhaps in Insane Asylum in Independence, Buchanan, Iowa, USA
1891 - Death of mother Verdigris, Antelope, Nebraska, USA
1814 - Death of father Knoxville, Knox, Nebraska, USA
1914 - Alive, per father’s death notice in The Verdigre Eagle, Thu, Jun 11, 1914, Page 1. 
1914 - “In California” per father’s death notice in paper
</Basic Information>

RECORDS I’VE FOUND
<1870 Census>
Name: Orin Carrer
Age in 1870:	12
Birth Date:	abt 1858
Birthplace:	Wisconsin
Dwelling Number:	51
Home in 1870: 	La Valle, Sauk, Wisconsin
Race:	White
Gender:	Male
Post Office:	Baraboo
Inferred Father:	Cyrus H Carrer
Inferred Mother:	Mary J A Carrer
Household members
Cyrus H Carver	age 52
Mary J A Carver	age 42
Dorr H Carver	age 17
Orin Carver	age 12
Loren E Carver	age 9
Oliver A Carver	age 7
Donnelly Carver	age 5
Barton B Carver	age 2]
</1870 Census>

<1880 Census>
Name:	Orin Carver
Age:	21
Birth Date:	Abt 1859
Birthplace:	Wisconsin
Home in 1880:	Sherman, Antelope, Nebraska, USA
Dwelling Number:	13
Race:	White
Gender:	Male
Relation to Head of House:	Son
Father's Name:	S.h. Carver
Father's Birthplace:	New York
Mother's Name:	Mary Carver
Mother's Birthplace:	New York
Occupation:	Farmer
Attended School:	Y
Household members
S.h. Carver	age 70
Mary Carver	age 59
D.h. Carver	age 29
Orin Carver	age 21
Loren Carver	age 18
Oliver Carver	age 16
Donaley Carver	age 14
Barton Carver	age 12
Orlen	age 10
</1880 census>

<Family Lore>
“Died in prairie fire”
“Living in Gresham, Oregon”
</Family Lore>

<Neligh Leader>
Aug 1887 Neligh Leader: “Orin Carver son of Chas. Carver, is in the asylum for insane at Independence, Buchanan county, Iowa. We are informed he has been there for the last 18 months.” 
Comment: Neligh is a bit south of the homesteads, but in the general area, and our Carver family is the only Carver family to ever be mentioned in the papers during this time frame in this area. So it is possible this is our Orin with his father’s name misreported, but no way to be certain.
</Neligh Leader>

<Washington Death Index>
Note: Not proven to be him.
Comment: His brother lived here during this time frame so maybe this is him, but who knows.
Washington, U.S., Select Death Index, 1907-1960
Birth, Marriage & Death
Quick compare
Name	Orin Carver	
Birth	abt 1858	
Death	30 Jun 1925 Medical Lake, Spokane County, Washington	New
Burial	01 Jul 1925
</Washington Death Index>

SOURCES CONSULTED
Ancestry.com
Familysearch.org
newspapers.com
nebraska historical society

KEY FINDINGS AND BREAKTHROUGHS
Key finding: Many online trees confuse this Orin with another named Orin Hugh Carver and mix them together.
Potential breakthroughs: The recent news article about the Insane Asylum is new and potentially interesting. Perhaps not actually a breakthrough.

DEAD ENDS OR CHALLENGES
I just don’t find much about him.

It’s been a chaotic month. Graduations. A family emergency. A lot of expected and unexpected curveballs.

And I am not a fast person.

My mom was fast—four-foot-ten and constantly in motion. Dad? Not so much. He ambled. You’ll see in a minute.

I’m more like Dad. I prefer his pace.

But here’s what I’ve realized: with enough prep, even a slow walker can move fast when it counts.

That’s how I ended up making a Father’s Day music video this morning—in just a couple hours. And no, I’m not one of those tech geniuses who knocks out masterpieces before breakfast. I made it fast because I’d already done the slow work, in bits and pieces, over time.

The video itself started out as six minutes of shaky, digitized footage from an old Hi8 tape. My daughter was holding the camera—bless her squirmy third-grade heart. The quality is low. The lighting is worse. But it’s the only video we have of my dad. It’s the only place we have his voice. (And of course the original is saved in the archives in its full original glory.)

That made it precious.

And that made it a perfect candidate for a little experiment:

Could I turn it into something meaningful—fast?

Could I zoom like my mother, even though I prefer to meander?

The answer turned out to be yes—but only because I’d been quietly preparing. Over months. Without knowing it.

What Helped Me Make It Fast (Even Though I’m Not)

1. Templates save your future self.

I keep templates for all kinds of things now: writing, video structure, prompts I use with ChatGPT, even little checklists for “How I did this last time.” It’s not fancy. I just stick them in a single folder so I can find them again.

When you’re working under pressure—or just tired—templates let you skip the blank page panic. You’re not starting from scratch. You’re starting from something.

2. Cheat sheets are better than memory.

Because you will forget what export setting finally worked last time. Or what AI tool gave you fewer weird hallucinations. Or how you reduced background noise without killing all the ambient sound.

So I make notes. Short notes! (I had to work on that. I like to go on and on, and then when I go back to read later, I’m like, Nancy, what WERE you thinking?) They should be just long enough to jog my memory. And now I can go faster, because I don’t have to re-learn what I already learned.

3. Work in small pieces. Then keep the pieces.

I didn’t do all the audio cleanup for this video at once. I played with it for ten minutes here and there over the course of a month. At the time, I wasn’t even sure how I’d use the tape. But when I needed it, there it was: prepped and waiting. The same goes for the music. First I worked on the lyrics. Then I worked on the song.

You don’t have to finish everything you start. Just finish parts, and save them. The rest might come together later—faster than you expect.

4. Practice quietly. The payoff will be loud.

This project wasn’t really fast. It only looked fast because I’d been building skills slowly. I’d learned just enough video editing. Just enough audio cleanup. I’d written song lyrics before. I’d played with AI music tools.

So when I needed to move quickly, I could.

Want to do this kind of thing later? Start dabbling now. A few minutes a week is enough to build confidence. (I call it “focused dabbling,” really, because you want to dabble in one place long enough to get familiar before you go off chasing some other shiny thing.)

5. Forget perfect. Go for meaningful.

The final video isn’t slick. I changed my mind about the transitions several times. Professionals would tell you they’re all wrong. The footage shakes. It’s amateur. But it has my daughter’s voice. My son’s Nintendo. My dad’s hat. His house. His car with that siding that peeled off like tree bark. It has a feeling.

No one in my family cares if it’s polished. They care that it exists.

Want to Try It?

If you’ve got an old family video—low quality, minimal audio, weird lighting—that might be the perfect starting point.

Here’s what you need to know how to do:

• Clean the sound a little (but keep the good ambient stuff: car doors, distant voices, laughter)

• Trim the video down to fit a song’s length

• Add a music track (something meaningful to you—or make your own, like I did)

• Export and share

If you want to experiment with AI music, I used Suno for this one. I wrote my own lyrics, but you don’t have to. ChatGPT can help. So can Suno itself. But even if you skip the music part, just turning an old tape into a short watchable video is powerful.

You don’t need to be fast. You just need to start saving your pieces.

When the moment comes, you’ll be ready to move.

If you try making your own “VH1-style” family video—or if you’ve already made something like this—I’d love to see it.

Drop a link in the comments or send me a note. These kinds of projects deserve an audience, even if it’s small.

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A Last Note About My Dad

Watching that old tape again, I was struck by how he wobbled when he walked. Did I not notice it then? I think his age just snuck up on me.

There’s a moment where he’s standing in his sweater, with his hat, looking out at the playground. Not saying a word.

But you can still see who he was, the way he held himself and took things in.

You forget those details until you see them again. That’s why the video matters. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

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OK, I'm pretty pleased with myself. Do you see the self-satisfied grin?

The other day I was talking about Endings and Beginnings in the Notes section on SubStack. (See link at end.)

In that previous note, I was trying to remember the name of the magazine I subscribed to back in the ‘80s and ‘90s. I finally found it: Everton's Genealogical Helper. That was it. I think. Maybe. Pretty sure!

It had this section in the back … what was it called? It was like a classified ad for people "Seeking information on this person."

So it's Saturday night, there’s nothing good on TV (just bad news and tired reruns) and I wonder: Can I retrace my steps? Can I time travel to the 1980s and find my cousin again for the first time?

Let’s Set The Scene

I don’t know about hair and clothes, but we can certainly find music for this. How about Richard Marx’s, "Right Here Waiting"? Because, in a way, that’s where my cousin was.

Here you go. You can listen while you read.

Just think of this as a love song to genealogy research. Because, really, can't you see it? "You've got me going crazy ..." 

Everton’s Genealogical Helper used to come in the mail every other month, and it took several days to read the whole thing. I faithfully scanned every single name in every single issue. Cup of coffee. Kid in my lap. Winnie the Pooh on the VCR. Finger running down the page.

I didn't know many family names yet, or very much about how to conduct research, and it seemed like nobody was looking for my ancestors. But then, one Saturday morning, there she was — Great-Great Grandma!

I almost spilled coffee in my daughter's lap!

Last night, I found myself craving that old thrill of discovery. The question was, where could I possibly track down a 35-year-old magazine at 8 p.m. on a Saturday?

• I did not save my copies. Too bad, because they’re selling like hotcakes on eBay.

• FamilySearch says back issues are available on microfiche. Yeah, no.

• The Internet Archive has tantalizing teasers, but only people with visual impairments can check these issues out. Do trifocals count?

• The Seattle Library has physical copies. But I would have to wait until tomorrow. Patience is not my virtue.

The 30-Minute Time Machine

After a bit more Googling, I locate the actual digital files at MyHeritage. Ta-da! It pays to snoop.

The only problem: I can't just page through the magazine here, because MyHeritage wants me to search it like a database. And now I'm thinking more about this magazine. I think the sections in the back were called Root Cellar and Bureau of Missing Ancestors. Is that right? It would be easy to find out if I could browse this collection.

Hello, I would like a "browse" feature, please. Is anybody listening?

But I try searching for my cousin's name, and there she is in the Sept-Oct 1989 issue. One line. One cousin. One Root Cellar number.

If I conduct a follow-up search for 36858, I should find all the names she submitted to the Root Cellar. So I do, and ...

Déjà vu.. Hello, Great Great Grandma!

And so, right here in 2025, I retraced my 1989 steps without ever leaving my living room.

It took about 30 minutes. It was better than reruns. It would have been even better if I had gone to the library and located the physical magazines, and I think I will do that in the near future.

Finding Gretchen

But what did I just accomplish?

I guess I just remembered how things were.

I remembered the tech stack we had back then, after I poked around a bit more and found some great software ads for the Commodore 64. I'll talk about that more later this week.

Most of all, I remember Gretchen.

I remember this older cousin I had never met who answered my mail and sent me all sorts of family information. Over the next few years she sent letter after letter, shared photos, and made phone calls. She asked for introductions to my aunts and cousins and traveled around to meet them.

And I remember that when she first put her names into that Root Cellar, she had no idea who might reach out for more information. She could have sat back and grumbled. “I've done all this research, and my family’s not interested! The younger generation just doesn’t care!”

Instead she planted a seed in the Root Cellar, and the younger generations found her.

Gretchen passed her legacy on, not only to me, but undoubtedly to other young cousins in other branches of her family. She did this with complete and utter selflessness, mentoring as she went along, answering questions, and providing guidance. She taught me the basics of research. She filled in large pieces of the framework on my mother’s mother’s side of the tree. And she had the sense to do it a few people at a time, with lots of back-and-forth conversation, rather than overwhelming me with a giant pile of information all at once.

Whenever I think of her now, I realize Gretchen really was right there. In the Root Cellar. She was just waiting for me.

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Who was your "Gretchen"? Was there a mentor, a family member, or a stranger who opened up a new world for you? I'd love to hear your story in the comments.

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PS. Here’s that Beginnings and Endings Note I was talking about earlier:

This is a new installment in a little series I'm calling: 💡 “Second Half Notes.”

Fancy, huh? I am not much of an emoji person, but AI keeps pushing them on me so I caved and used the lightbulb. But as for all the other little symbols it wants me to use. Nope. Not having it. 🪵☕🕰️✏️

PS Number 2: There’s a companion YouTube video that goes along with this. You can see it here:

I had my six month reunion last Thursday. At the genetics center. With my nurse practitioner. It's a nonprofit hospital, and every few days I get another email from another provider, “I am sorry to inform you that as of July 27 I will no longer be working at the hospital. It has been an honor to serve you …”

Nonprofit hospitals in my country of origin do not seem to be faring very well right now.

This last couple of weeks on SubStack Notes I’ve been talking about endings and beginnings. If you haven’t read Substack Notes, hop onto the website sometime and click on the “Notes” tab.  

Here are a few recent notes that talked about endings and beginnings.

• Finding Old Notes from 1994

• Writing Notes on Planes 

• Endings and Beginnings 

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Grandma’s Legacy (Like it or Not)

When I went in for my genetic testing, all I knew was that Grandma Annie passed along a genetic mutation inherited from one of her parents. 

I knew we had cousins coming down with cancer, left and right, year after year - some as young as 25, some as old as 75, some with multiple recurring cases, and some with a type of breast cancer called “triple-negative.” Whatever that was.

I was hopelessly uneducated for somebody who lost both grandmothers to cancer. But I can tell you now, triple-negative is not a positive thing. So after seeing the damage this mutation has already inflicted on my cousins, I thought, Wait! What if I have this, and I’ve passed it on to my descendants?

I called my doctor, who sent me to the genetics center. And sure enough, I do have the variant. Love you, Grandma. Thanks! 

But so far, no cancer. The genetics center helped me understand next steps, which I followed. Now I go in every six months for follow-up exams, a semi-annual reunion with caring professionals who remember my name and history and always give me a hug.

These people keep a copy of the hand-drawn family tree created by my cousin. And they remember how relieved I was when we discovered that I had not passed this genetic distress along to my descendants. 

There used to be two nurse practitioners, but one just sent out her “We regret” email. I feel a sense of foreboding. Are we looking at another ending?

A Hundred Years Ago

I’ve been wondering where Grandma Annie went for treatment back in 1925 when her cancer advanced to the point of no return. And how did she afford to pay for care?

If I pull out her death certificate, it shows that her cause of death was not breast cancer. It was “Carcinoma of Rectum.” My oncologist confirms that research is ongoing in the area of colorectal cancer risk for BRCA1. The risk seems higher for women under age 50, but generally when you think of BRCA1, you think more of breast, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers.

At any rate, she passed the genetic risk along to my dad, who had no idea. Since he lived 88 years cancer-free, I never thought I had any risk. That was … optimistic.

But I digress. I’m looking at this death certificate. Way up at the top on the right, it says where she was staying when she died, at a place called Verges Sanitarium. 

It says she’s had this cancer for more than two years.

The doctor who signed the certificate states she was in his care from July 9 through November 8, 1925. I’m going to assume she was at Verges Sanitarium for these four months. That’s an educated guess based on the death certificate and family stories.

Let’s time travel back one hundred years. Here’s what that moment might have looked like.

It’s June. Grandma’s health is failing quickly. Grandpa Orlie is starting to look around, trying to figure out where he can take her for further care. Sometimes he works. Sometimes he wanders off and tells the family he’s looking for work.

The older boys are working, whenever they can find jobs.

17-year-old Sina keeps house and takes care of Grandma.

And 15-year-old Willie? That’s my dad. He just quit school to work in a restaurant washing dishes. Fun, fun!

It’s not that he’s against washing dishes. It’s the 12-hour days he doesn’t love. The pruny arms. The no days off. But he gets free meals. That’s a big deal. There isn’t much food at the Carver house.

So, back to my questions. What kind of place is this Verges Sanitarium. And since Grandma lives below the poverty line, how does she afford to stay here for four months?

The Sanitarium on Prospect Avenue

I ran a ChatGPT Deep Research report on Verges Sanitarium. Recently Denyse Allen and I talked about Deep Research Reports here. I like to use these as starting points for further research.

In the early 20th century, Norfolk, Nebraska was a growing plains city with few formal medical facilities. Dr. Carl J. Verges was a young doctor fresh out of med school. Doctoring ran in the family. His daddy was a doctor on the Nebraska frontier.

Verges was well-known in the community. He began his practice in 1908. In 1910 he bought a defunct brick factory and began turning it into a park. He named it Verges Park. In 1913 he was elected mayor, and later he served as city physician. 

He started the sanitarium in 1918 at 900 Prospect Avenue, right next to Verges Park. By 1941 this was a 30-bed private hospital that served a cross-section of city residents, regardless of income level. It had an OB ward, surgery wards, and facilities for long term care.

I’m not sure when the hospital closed, but apparently the building may still be there, repurposed as an apartment building. So it’s possible that right now, today, I could send one of my cousins to take a picture of the building where Grandma stayed 100 years ago.

Maybe I could coax a whole group of cousins into a 100-year reunion. A family history adventure. Is that exciting, or just dumb? I think we could make it fun for kids.

Dr. Verges built a cave at Verges park. Verges Cave has sparked some fabulous legends. Is the cave haunted? Was there a little speakeasy hidden in there during prohibition? Hm …

In September, 1925, a construction accident at the hospital made big headlines. This would have been while Grandma was staying there. I wonder if she heard all the ruckus.

Henry Lindstead was helping to remodel a room at the hospital when he decided to light his pipe and caught his trousers on fire. Firetrucks came. A big crowd gathered. But the other workmen had already extinguished the flames by then. No smoking rules, apparently. But at least they did have a fire extinguisher.

Poor Henry. Another article in 1926 suggests he was later hospitalized due to a follow-up infection, so this must have been a serious burn. 

The Paper Trail of Care

Henry’s moment got preserved in the local news, but Grandma’s story? If it’s in the paper, we’re going to have to dig a little more to find it. Which brings me to my other question. How could the family afford this care?

According to my Deep Research report, Nebraska law required counties to pay for care for their poor, although navigating the red tape often required legal action. It describes a case where Verges Sanitarium sued Morrill County for reimbursement of an unpaid patient bill. (Link below.)

When the county paid for something, it often showed up in old newspapers in a section titled something like, “Commissioners Proceedings.” Usually these are kind of cryptic, with names and dollar amounts. I’ve seen a few of these for Carvers and wondered what they covered, so let’s look more closely. 

Here’s The Tilden Citizen Thu, Jan 28, 1926 ·Page 4. This is a couple of months after Grandma passed away. “C. J. Verges, care of Mrs. Carver … 120.85.” 

On December 10 The Norfolk Press has another: “Dr. C. J. Verges, medical attention Mrs. Carver 156.50.” 

And similar sums show up in The Tilden Citizen in late October, August, and July. 

It looks like the cost of care was around $115 per month, plus whatever Grandpa was able to pay, if anything. Best guess, the hospital probably charged on a sliding scale.

I tried to find a link to a copyright-free photo of Dr. Verges, but as of now I don’t see one. However, I am looking at a Facebook page for the Elkhorn Valley Museum, and if you go there you can see a photo and comments from people who remember him as their doctor. 

It sounds like this small hospital treated people well. I hope my grandmother was one of those who were treated well, and that her nurses were as kind as mine are now.

A Reunion of Another Kind

If I could go to Verges Park today, I might take a deep breath, close my eyes, and have my own mini-reunion with the woman whose DNA still gets me summoned to the genetics center every six months.

“Hi Grandma. We’re still here. We’re still surviving. We don’t know what new beginnings are coming next. I guess we’ll watch and see.

But while I’ve got you, just one question.

When Grandpa proposed… what made you say yes?”

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Source Links

• Colorectal Cancer Risk for BRCA1/BRCA2: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25195694/

• Who’s Who in Nebraska: https://usgennet.org/usa/ne/topic/resources/OLLibrary/who1940/co/madison3.htm#:~:text=Alpha%20Sigma%3B%20m%20Leota%20Daugherty,Prospect%3B%20res%20906%20Prospect%2C%20Norfolk

• Dr. Verges Find-a-Grave Page: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/231101684/carl_johannes_verges

• Case where the Sanitarium Sued the County for an unpaid bill: https://govdocs.nebraska.gov/epubs/S3000/B001-1943.pdf

• Elkhorn Valley Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=946853662070108&id=237913339630814&set=a.316282358460578

• More about Verges Park: https://usgenealogyresearch.atwebpages.com/nemcgs/newsletters_library/Vol.%2037%20No.%20181%20May-June%202016.pdf#:~:text=the%20brick%20yard%20property%20in,of%20the%20Park%20features%20still

• And more from the museum: https://elkhornvalleymuseum.org/discover/verges-park/

• Is the cave haunted?https://www.newschannelnebraska.com/story/47553145/is-verges-cave-haunted-halloween-time-sparks-curiosity-into-the-mysterious-cave

• Madison County Genealogical Society Newsletters - a goldmine for genealogists in the area: https://usgenealogyresearch.atwebpages.com/nemcgs/newsletters_library/

📚 Family & Legacy

Ancestors, cousins, and the discoveries tucked into records and artifacts.
Start with: From Stowaway to Stagecoach

🎶 Music & Storytelling

How music carries memory and becomes part of family history.
Start with: The Hand-Me-Down Guitar That Changed Everything

👧 Family History for Kids

Quirky facts, playful projects, and stories that hook the next generation.
Start with: How I Turned My Grandson’s Fridge Art into a DIY Book (a.k.a. The Rainbow Ducks)

💻 Technology & Storytelling

Experiments with tools and research tricks — from AI prompts to old archives — that open up new ways of telling stories.
Start with: I Tried the “One Good Prompt”

You can explore by category above—or just scroll through my recent posts. Thanks for being here.

—Richard II (Act 3, Scene 2)

I’m feeling nostalgic today, during an eventful month.

Two graduations. Two birthdays. Two driver’s tests. So I pulled out this tiny video I made with Mr. Learner’s Permit, way back during Covid. 

We knew nothing about making videos. I think we recorded this in Zoom with the computer’s webcam.

I don’t know if you remember, but at least in our state, the barbers and hair salons all closed down. So I gave him a hair cut, and my hair had grown out with this sort of reddish tinge. We called it Covid Hair.

But let’s go back to the beginning

In 2020, I had an idea. We were all stuck at home, during the pandemic, with the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower looming. So why not learn how to make videos while teaching the grandkids about this ship that sailed the Atlantic in 1620? Covid multitasking.

The Mayflower got an outsized amount of attention, so it has an outsized amount of research to draw on. I would never run out of material. And, bonus points, some of our ancestors scurvied their way over the pond on that leaky little rat trap. So we could focus on them.

The grandkids participated in the first few videos, one for each kid. We set up some rules. We didn’t mention their full names or where they lived. Some chose not to show their faces. On YouTube we turned off comments for videos where they were involved. Various levels of kid privacy. 

Then I continued on my own. Just practicing. Clearly an amateur. Never pretending to be anything else.

One morning I woke up to the ding of a message. “Congratulations! You’ve reached 1000 subscribers!” 

That’s not a lot, but it was a milestone. In the comments I watched strangers in heated political disputes over whether the ship’s passengers were saints or scoundrels, and I thought right, congratulations, you’ve reached 1000 debaters!

Some viewers would scold me if I didn’t make their Mayflower ancestors sound heroic enough. 

One lady commented how I had lost weight, and she really hoped I wasn’t sick. 

Actually I thought she was rather sweet, but then there were the vocabulary correctors. “Did you know we don’t say slavery anymore? It’s enslavement.”

Just thought you’d like to know. En. Slave. Ment. 

I’m not super sensitive, but at some point you have to ask—why am I doing this? I just wanted to learn how to do a new thing. About the ancestors. With the grandkids.

To thine own self be true.

—Hamlet (Act 1, Scene 3)

And why are people’s identities so wrapped up in what their ancestors did 400 years ago? These folks were like people you would meet at a renaissance festival, Shakespeare’s contemporaries! If you met 10x Great Grandma Mary Brewster on the street, would you even understand a word she said? 

(And trust me, if you rely that much on heritage, be glad you’re not related to my Grandpa Orlie!)

So I backed everything up and deleted the whole channel. No regrets. I’m not a big deleter — I still have greeting cards from my first birthday — but this was different. I’ll save the videos we like for the family archives. They were poor first attempts anyway.

And yes, I could have kept the channel and changed topics, but would I have gotten rid of the politically charged debaters? 

In retrospect, the hardest part was the juggling. I was trying to figure out microphones, cameras, editing, research, and then keep track of all the facts. It was a good challenge, an excellent learning experience, but I could have used some help.

I couldn’t afford human help, but if the current AI tools had been available then, that would have been great! 

Now, I know, to hear me talk, you would think I use AI all the time. That lady? She’s just tech-obsessed. But no. I drive without GPS. I still write with a pen on paper. I like DVDs, physical books, manual can openers, conversations that involve actual human voices. I have to remind myself about tools that might help with some of these things part of the time.

Give me your hand.

—Hamlet (Act 5, Scene 1)

So let’s look at just a few of the ways AI could have helped my near-overwhelm as I took on the challenge of learning so many things all at once. 

1. Script Drafting and Editing

I wouldn’t want AI to write the script. I’m too vain for that. But it could help me tighten, smooth transitions, and since I always try to cram way too many details into everything, it could potentially point those spots out, too.

Special Note: It could also help with all those vocabulary updates. This morning I asked ChatGPT about enslavement. Why the change? It explained. We want to focus on the human, not the condition. I’m not against this. I just have specific vocabulary words in my head from grade school, and honestly I can’t keep up with the latest greatest “way we say things now”. But I can tell ChatGPT something like: “Review this script for outdated, inaccurate, or insensitive historical or genealogical terminology and suggest modern, accurate alternatives.”

2. Titles and Thumbnails

When my brain was already fried from editing, it would have been fantastic to say: “Hey ChatGPT, give me five title options that aren’t boring” or “Gemini, What thumbnail colors work best for history content?” 

3. Deep Research Help

Many AI assistants can now do web searches, but the new Deep Research report functionality would have been particularly useful. 

I wrote about these in my last post. Denyse Allen and I talked about these recently in a live stream. And Denyse just put together a beginner’s guide over at Chronicle Makers. So let’s link up to that and follow her instructions to decide which would be best for various types of Mayflower Research. 

Here’s the link: https://denyseallen.substack.com/p/beginners-guide-ai-deep-research

The Chronicle Makers Beginner’s Guide to Deep Research for Genealogy is recommending three different Deep Research options depending on what you’re trying to do. So I’ve chosen three different Mayflower research opportunities as examples.

Make report / of how the world goes.

—King Lear (Act 5, Scene 3)

When we started these videos, my grandson was not quite ten. Little boys like stories about adventure and intrigue, blowing things up, falling overboard, pirates, clandestine meetings, hiding from the authorities, macabre medical mysteries … Oh. I like that one. What do you think?

1. Give me 12 little known medical treatments the Mayflower ship’s doctor would have used on his patients.

The Chronicle Makers Beginner’s Guide recommends Google Gemini’s Deep Research tool for “fast, polished reports that are easy to share, export, or listen to.” So I think it makes sense for this one, because it might be fun to listen to it, or to print it out and turn into a little booklet. Mr. Learner’s Permit might even get a kick out of that now.

2. Create a report that provides a thorough Mayflower Ancestry Research Guide for 2025.

If you have New England roots, you might have Mayflower ancestor, and a guide could help you learn how to figure this out. Just, please, don’t get all wrapped up in needing your ancestor to be heroic. 

The Beginner’s Guide makes a strong case for the ChatGPT Deep Research tool for this one. It’s “good for custom reports and organizing research into clean, structured format.”

Note: Sometimes I’ve noticed that ChatGPT does not go looking at Familysearch or some of the other places where I know there is good Mayflower information, so I think I should mention Familysearch.org specifically in my prompt, along with the General Society of Mayflower Descendants and American Ancestry (although it is likely to find those.)

3. Give me a plan for a 7-Day Stephen Hopkins Tour vacation to Bermuda in 2025.

Now for something a little more current. My grandson is very fond of Mayflower Passenger Stephen Hopkins. Stephen was almost hanged for treason in Bermuda after being shipwrecked there and, maybe, almost getting caught in the Bermuda Triangle.

Hey, I don’t know about that triangle part, but if you’re nine, it’s fun to speculate! 

I understand Bermuda has some Hopkins tourist attractions. Wouldn’t it be fun to get more information about that? If you were a Hopkins descendant, and you wanted to cash out your 401k for a good cause, you could take the family to Bermuda!

Looking at the Beginner’s Guide, it really sounds like Perplexity’s Research option will get me the information I want for this one. So that’s what I’m going to choose. I really like Perplexity, by the way. 

My Prompts

But are these simple prompts the best prompts?

Honestly, they might be fine for starters. I could try them as-is in one of the Deep Research tools and see what I get.

I could also expand them to specify exactly what to cover and how to format the output.

Or I could use a GPT to help me. That’s a pre-made prompt available inside of ChatGPT.

In my next post, I’ll show you one of the GPTs made specifically for Deep Research prompts and how it transforms my simple prompts into prompts with more detail. 

So until next time, happy Deep Researching. And Happy May. Watch out for New Graduates everywhere. And New Drivers!

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Hop on over to Chronicle Makers and get your full Beginner’s Guide to Deep Research for Genealogy. Because you know I’ll never get around to making you one. I’ll be too busy making a list of New Vocab Words for Older Ladies, or something …

For More on Deep Research

• See my previous articles here https://www.legacycarvers.news/p/whats-in-a-nickname-the-story-of?r=3og2hh

• And here https://www.legacycarvers.news/p/friday-live-with-denyse-and-nancy

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Why choose this topic? Well, honestly, it was one of many things on our list. And these reports are really useful.

They are like happy little librarians that go running around the internet collecting information for you and writing it all up while you are busy doing other things. None of the Deep Research reports can go behind paywalls (so far), and they can still make mistakes, but in general they provide a good starting point for further research.

Below are some links to get you started.

On Sunday I believe Denyse will be following up with more Deep Research info, so keep an eye on her column at Chronicle Makers for that post.

ChatGPT Deep Research Reports

• ChatGPT - https://chatgpt.com

These are considered the “premium” reports. If you need something really heavy duty, ChatGPT can dig deep. But as I mention in the video, it can also get long-winded. The first report I ran came in at just a little under 18 thousand words! That’s the length of novella! So it pays to be specific when you tell it what you want in your report.

Currently you can run of these per month for free (“light” version) and about 25 per month on the plus subscription. (Subject to change. It was 10. Now it’s 25.)

Look for the “Deep Research” option.

In some versions of the app it might be hidden. Look for the telescope. That’s the Deep Research Icon. (I think it’s a telescope. I mean, it looks kind of like my computer mic, but that would make absolutely no sense ; )

And on your phone, look for this set of two lines with circles, next to the plus sign below. When you press that, it will bring up a menu that includes an option for “Run deep research.”

Other places that have Deep Research reports

• Perplexity - https://perplexity.ai - look for the “research” button.

• Grok - https://grok.com or "“Grok” at https://x.com then choose “DeepSearch”

• Gemini - https://gemini.google.com - look for “Deep Research”

The Dark Side of Deep Reports

As convenient as these reports are, I have some reservations.

Let’s say my report got some of its information from a blog post. That blogger spent time putting that information together, and now I’m seeing the information out of context without seeing the entire post.

So here’s what I do. I treat these reports as a collection of links that I’m going to follow for more information. They are not the end product. They are the beginning.

This allows me to see those blog posts in context. It also allows me to check the sources and make sure the facts all line up. If the link goes to Wikipedia I might not read the whole thing. But if it takes me to somebody’s blog post, I will.

An Experiment

At one point in the video you will notice Denyse mentioning that these Deep Research reports don’t seem to go out to the Familysearch Wiki to get information, which doesn’t make sense because often that’s the logical place to go.

I’ve noticed this as well and also that they don’t go to free pages at ancestry.com. So I decided to try an experiment. I did this on Gemini Deep Research, but I assume it would work on any of them.

My prompt:

Create a report of key historical news resources in Nebraska. Make sure to check the familysearch wiki and any free guides at ancestry.com (whatever is not behind the paywall) for any information stored there. List both digital archives and archives that are on microfilm or microfiche.

This created a report that accessed both the Familysearch Wiki and Ancestry.com. Not the most intuitive route, but it did work.

Until Next Time

We had fun with this video experiment. If you have questions about Deep Research Reports, put them down in the comments. If you’d like us to talk about something in particular next time, reach out and let us know.

And I’ll be back soon with a regular post.

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Your mother has a switch in her hand and no patience left. You take off running barefoot down the alley, dodging crates and stray dogs, your feet slapping against wet cobblestones.

You don’t know where you’re going, just away. Then you smell it, salt and tar.

The wharf. And a ship, creaking, loading, almost gone.

You don’t stop to think. You just run, straight for the gangplank ...

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From Hearing Stories to Collecting Them

When I was young, children's stories were full of cowboys and Indians, Pilgrims and pioneers, orphans, trappers, pirates, stowaways. So you can understand my delight when Mom told me the tale of my Irish great-great-grandpa, John McGuffin, who stowed away on a ship to Canada way back when he was nine years old. Wow. Imagine that!

As an adult, I began to collect McGuffin information from older family members. One cousin gave me a copy of a letter, written by my grandmother's oldest brother.

“John McGuffin (first) was born in County Armagh North of Ireland. When he was 9 years old his mother was a going to thrash him and he said no and she did not for he ran away from her and boarded a boat just as the boat left for this country and she never saw him again.”

-- Excerpt From William McGuffin's 1957 letter to his nephew Bob McGuffin. Full excerpt in Appendix.

By then the allure of stowaway adventure had dulled, and my inner skeptic had learned to ask annoying questions. I mean, where did Grandpa John go to the bathroom while he was hiding? And didn't those bare feet get cold? And honestly, has anybody looked at a map to make sure County Armagh is even close to the sea?

I did find a map, and you know what? Maybe it’s possible. There’s a little finger of water way down in the bottom between counties Armagh and Down. That’s called Carlingford Lough, and the town of Newry connects to it from the Newry Canal. It’s been a port town for a long time.

And then there’s a large inland body of water at the top of County Armagh called Lough Neagh. It appears that Newry Canal went all the way between Lough Neagh and the Irish Sea back when Grandpa John was a boy. So, OK, he may have been near some ships.

Visiting The Old Place in Michigan

In the early 1990s, I visited Michigan. Bob McGuffin took me to see the house where Great Grandma Mary and her family lived. She was the wife of our stowaway's son, John Junior. We found the creek where my grandmother and her siblings used to play. And in my mind, a new story began to take shape.

It’s a Saturday night in the early 1890s. The kids are tired from playing by the creek. They build a fire. Great Grandma makes popcorn. They beg for a story and stare wide-eyed as she describes John's bare feet running up the gangplank. Will he make it before the ship leaves the dock?

The best popcorn maker in the next generation would have been Gramps. If I close my eyes I can see him methodically shaking the popcorn pan — back and forth, back and forth. Grandma would be the story teller this time. The wide-eyed kids would be Mom and her sibs.

It’s a Classic

As the years passed, the internet made it much easier for me to find more family members. I learned that Grandpa John’s three children had many descendants and found out that this story was known in other branches of the family besides ours. 

So, how could I figure out if this story is true? Did John McGuffin really stow away on a ship to Canada when he was nine years old?

Just between you and me, it feels a lot like a classic adventure story. Think about books you’ve read. A child makes a daring escape. Often a boy. Usually an orphan, or neglected, running from some kind of trouble. Think Peter Pan. Huck Finn. Little Orphan Annie. Oliver Twist. 

As a matter of fact, there’s a category of stories called Escape or Secret Journey legends. Often families tell them to explain how someone ended up in a new country without any official records, or maybe to make the whole thing sound a little more epic.

Later someone in the family might find the actual records and realize the ancestor traveled to a new country on a ship, all nice and legal. The real story might seem boring compared to the legend, not as entertaining to tell at family reunions, or on Saturday nights in front of the fire.

The Timeline

One suggestion for verifying old stories is to create a timeline and see what the records tell us. I haven't looked closely at this part of the family tree for a long time, so I got out my notes, and they bring back a lot of memories from the early nineties.

This was back when I was just starting to pull together the pieces of the extended family. We communicated by telephone or U.S. Mail. When I needed to look things up, I went to the library or the local family history center. How quaint.

In this notebook, I can relive the discovery of each new cousin, see the scribbled phone numbers, notes, the dates we spoke, what we said. At first, I only vaguely remembered the story. I knew it was Ireland. But was he a McGuffin or a McMillan? And how many generations back? Then, page by page, the story unfolds.

It turns out that while we’re missing records from Ireland or the trip to Canada, we do have census records, a marriage bond, Uncle Will’s letter, notes from the family Bible, and a couple of death notices. That’s enough for a timeline, so I made one, and I’ll put a copy in the appendix at the end.

I think the most telling information comes from the death notices. They state that he is 85 years old in December of 1896. This would mean he was born about 1811. Of course, every single census record gives him a slightly different estimated birth year, from 1813 to 1815. But at least we have a range: 1811-1815.

Both death notices also say he came from County Armagh in 1830. If he was born in 1811, that would mean he was 18 or 19 when he arrived. At the very youngest, he might have been 15. Age nine does not seem to fit into this equation.

So perhaps he did stow away, but at an older age. Until we find his travel records, I’m not qualified to say. My inner critic thinks it’s unlikely, but that critic isn’t always qualified either. After all, at one point, the critic was ready to dismiss this story as silly family fiction. Drop it. Kick it to the curb. Eliminate it from the family canon.

I can’t say for sure whether it’s true, but I can say that I cherish it. I cherish how my mom used to tell it to me, and how I forgot it for years and then rediscovered it, and with that rediscovery, found so much unknown family history and so many unknown cousins.

An Old Legend for a New Century

I don’t think the story circulates in the family as much now as it did in my grandmother’s day. For them, it was an origin story — a single, high‑stakes scene that provided an easy‑to‑retell answer when the kids asked, “Where did we come from?” 

At the same time, it highlighted the fact that our family thinks courage and resourcefulness are important. And aren’t those important now? So I think it’s worth recirculating, perhaps with some 21st century updates.

My youngest granddaughter will be a good age for exciting adventure stories pretty soon, and when I pass this along to her, I’ll have some choices. 

If you look at an excerpt from Grandpa John’s death notice, it says that he had a contract to carry mail in the old stagecoach days and was a pioneer on the Governor’s Road. These facts may not seem as exciting as stowing away on a ship, but both items have excellent story potential. So, I could reframe, update, or refocus. 

I’m leaning towards the idea of a story book, where my granddaughter is next in line. It’s her turn to be the keeper of the family legend, just like her mother before her, and her grandmother, and all the generations of girls back to that house in Michigan. We don’t know if all the details are true, but we do know that the story is ours. And we know that certain parts seem true, like County Armagh, and cold feet, and salt air, and being a pioneer, and delivering mail in the stagecoach days. 

And we are definitely, absolutely positive that the story goes really, really well with popcorn. 

Something like that. She’s just three now, so I have time to think it through.

What’s your family legend? Does your inner skeptic think it’s true? What message did it highlight for your family? Tell me down in the comments.

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Appendix

Full Excerpt from Will McGuffin’s Letter

“John McGuffin (first) was born in County Armagh North of Ireland. When he was 9 years old his mother was a going to thrash him and he said no and she did not for he ran away from her and boarded a boat just as the boat left for this country and she never saw him again. He landed u see. Went to work in railroad from Detroit to Paris and St. Thomas to Paris and he made a fortune so my mother told me. Could not read nor write but could figure in his head. Later he married a woman by name of Hale. Her husband was killed by a trotting horse and John McGuffin the first married her and they had three children: John McG and Bill McG and 1 girl and she married a man by name of Crozier. My mother was out to see them when they were all alive. I had to stay home and keep house for my dad... My mother told me all these things about John McGuffin the first.” Excerpt From William McGuffin's 1957 letter to his nephew Bob McGuffin.

Grandpa John’s Timeline

• 1811–1815: Birth, County Armagh, Ireland (Obits suggest 1811, Census records 1813-1815)

• 1830: Emigration from Ireland, to Dundas, Upper Canada (Supported by death notices, oral history)

• 1830s: Learned wagon-making with William & John Hersee, Dundas / Old Princeton (Mentioned in death notices)

• 1837-03-24: Marriage to Amanda Pelton (widow of Mr. Wells), Port Burwell, Ontario (Marriage bond record. Oral history says “Hale” - Uncle Will likely misremembered.)

• 1841-08-17: Birth of daughter Amanda, Princeton, Ontario (Marriage register, census records, family bible)

• 1844-02-11: Birth of son William G., Paris, Ontario (Census records, death record, family bible)

• 1846-02-09: Birth of son John Jr., Blenheim, Ontario (Census records, family bible)

• 1850: Stockholder in Paris & Ayr Road Co., Brant County, Ontario (Stockholder list confirms involvement in building road)

• 1851: Residence, Blenheim, Oxford Co., Ontario (1851 census)

• 1861: Residence (Head of House), Blenheim, Ontario (1861 census)

• 1871: Residence, (Head of House), Blenheim, Ontario (1871 census)

• 1889-03-01: Death of wife Amanda, Princeton, Ontario (Mentioned in Newspaper)

• 1891: Residence, (Widowed), Blenheim, Ontario (1891 census)

• 1896-12-23 or 24: Death at home of son-in-law Adam Crozier, Princeton, Ontario (Expositor says 23rd; Daily Sentinel Review says 24th)

• 1896-12-26: Funeral at Crozier home; burial at Princeton Cemetery, Princeton, Ontario (Death notices; officiated by Rev. J. Kennedy)

John and Amanda McGuffin’s Marriage Bonds Transcription

Province of Upper Canada

Know all Men by these Presents, that We, John Tait of Port Burwell in the London District, Blacksmith and Thomas McKinsly of the same place, Blacksmith

Are jointly and severally held and firmly bound unto our Sovereign Lord the King in the Sum of Two Hundred Pounds, lawful Currency of the Province aforesaid, to be paid unto our said Lord the King, or His Heirs or Successors: for which payment well and truly to be made, We bind ourselves, our and each of our Heirs, Executors, and Administrators, jointly and severally, firmly by these Presents, Sealed with our Seals, at Port Burwell in the District and Province aforesaid, this Twenty fourth day of March in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty seven.

The Condition of this Obligation is such, that whereas a License of Marriage has this day issued from the Office of the Lieutenant Governor of the said Province of Upper Canada, for the purpose of joining together in Holy Matrimony John McGuffin of the township of Oxford in the London District, waggon maker, and Amanda Wells of the same place, Widow.

Now if it shall appear that there is no affinity, consanguinity, pre-contract, or any other lawful cause or impediment, to hinder their being so joined together, as aforesaid, then this obligation to be null and void, otherwise to remain in full force and virtue.

Signed, Sealed and Delivered

in presence of

Thos. Brunell

John Tait

Thomas McKinsly

Marriage Bonds 1837

Public Archives Canada

John’s Death Notice Transcription

Mr. John McGuffin, of Etonia, died on Wednesday, 23rd inst., at the residence of his son-in-law, Adam Crozier, in the 85th year of his age. He was a native of County Armagh, Ireland, and came to Canada in 1830, and went to Dundas and learned the trade of wagon-making. For some time he worked with William and John Hersee in their shop on the Governor’s Road, then called old Princeton. He afterwards became a contractor and built most of the Governor’s Road between Paris and Eastwood and the London Plank road from Brantford to Woodstock. He also did much of the fencing on the Great Western railway, furnishing ties and telegraph poles for nearly all the road. He had the contract for carrying the mails on this road in the old stage coach days. His death removes another of the first settlers on the Governor’s Road, of whom very few now remain to tell of their hardships and trials in hewing out homes for themselves and families. Deceased leaves two sons, William, of Burford, and John, in Michigan; and one daughter, Mrs. A. Crozier, his wife having died some few years since at their home in Etonia. The funeral took place to this cemetery on Saturday, 26th inst., service being held at Mr. Crozier’s by Rev. Mr. Kennedy. The pall-bearers were J. Wallace, G. Minnette, D. Kipp, M. Showers, T. Elmes and M. Cane. In politics, Mr. McGuffin was a Conservative.

— 1897-01-01 The Expositor page 9

If you want to read more about Family Canons, Family Legends, and Legends in general

• Elizabeth Stone's book Black Sheep and Kissing Cousins: How Our Family Stories Shape Us is a classic popular exploration directly on this topic. Look for copies at used book stores. Do not be fooled by oddball prices like 99 dollars. Paperbacks can be found at reputable stores for more like $6.95.

• Stith Thompson Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Vol. 1–6): This is old, dry, and out of print, but you can find references to it in many places, and Hathitrust has all 6 volumes available online. (Like I said, very dry, but if you want to see every legend or myth ever told, all categorized and subcategorized and numbered …_)

• Volume 1: A to C
  Volume 2: D to E

  Volume 3: F to H

  Volume 4: J to K

  Volume 5: L to Z

  Volume 6: Index

• Jan Harold Brunvand - The Vanishing Hitchhiker - American Urban Legends and Their Meanings: Not specifically about family history but definitely about legends, and much of it pertains.

To amuse myself, I sent silly texts to the grandkids, set up new rules to tame my email, and made a professional voice clone, since my voice stopped working for a bit. Here is a sample. This silly 49-second video starts out with me talking about RootsTech, or am I?

Then I thought, well, let's check out the new features in FamilySearch and Ancestry. They always release new things when RootsTech has its yearly Genealogy Technology conference in March. And as I logged into FamilySearch, I had a sudden flashback.

Let's call it: The Day My AI Bubble Burst

It's 2022. I’m sitting in my easy chair, feet up, recovering from surgery. And I’m bored, because everything feels fine when I sit still, but moving is a problem. So I figure out how to log into this new ChatGPT thing and ask it to write a haiku for a contest at work. Then I have it write the grandkids some silly texts in Shakespeare’s voice.

"Verily, sweet sprouts, tell me true, have thy Christmas wish lists met their due?"

Fun! But, now what? Shall we try stalking some ancestors?

I’ve been researching Grand Uncle Dorr. The census says he was doing janitorial work for the Sioux City school system in the 1910s, and I wonder how much a janitor would have earned. Was this family above the poverty line?

Surely that’s information ChatGPT can find. So I ask.

This amazing tool gives me income information, and news articles from the Sioux City Journal about the Great Sioux City Labor Strike of 1917, complete with detailed source citations!

Wow! Did you know there was a Great Sioux City Labor Strike in 1917? Me either!

I hop over to newspapers.com to find the article it mentions from the Sioux City Journal. Saturday, May 21, 1917. Wait... May 21 was a Monday, and this issue does not exist. Nor does this news article.

Every single citation turns out to be complete fiction. It’s all made up!

ChatGPT was unleashed on an unsuspecting world on November 30. It's only a couple of weeks old, and a little bit of research tells me it does not yet have internet access.

Well, hello, why didn't it just say so?

Clearly this GPT stuff is only good for texting Shakespeare to the grandkids. And they’re already over that.

If you’ve read some of my other articles, you might think I spend all my time playing with AI. Honestly, no. I have a cat. I have grandkids. I have ancestors!

Also, don’t tell, but I'm not super techie. I did start out as a Junior Programmer back in 1980 and do manage a team of software developers now, so I guess you could say I've been techie-adjacent for more than four decades.

I've also been stalking my ancestors for nearly as long, trying to get them to tell me their stories. And while not a professional genealogist, I've made so many genealogy mistakes that I think I'm qualified to give this opinion: AI is here to help us make more family history mistakes even faster, if we let it.

Or it could help us, if we pay attention and understand what we're getting into. We'll see.

100 years from now when our descendants take part in 52 Ancestors for The Next Great Century, will they look back on historic events and think of November 30, 2022 as one of those landmark events?

Maybe they'll mark it as the last day they could be sure their ancestors wrote things themselves, without machine assistance. Or the last day that you could do a Google Search and get actual search results, and not a weird Google AI overview that stole stuff from a bunch of other websites and compiled it at the top of the page.

I don't know. I'm curious. What do you think?

If you just came back from RootsTech and saw some of those AI presentations, maybe you're looking for a list of links to get you started. Here's my list. It's not all-inclusive. It's just some people I like. Help yourself. Go slow. And don't be fooled.

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People & Blogs (Free or free with pay options):

• Ethan Mollick – https://substack.com/@oneusefulthing

• Steve Little & Mark Thompson – https://aigenealogyinsights.com/author/digitalarchivst/ & https://makingfamilyhistory.com – They also co-host a podcast together.

• Andrew Redfern – https://andrewredfern.com/family-history/

• Mark Humphries – https://generativehistory.substack.com

• Denyse Allen – https://www.youtube.com/c/paancestors / https://denyseallen.substack.com

• Beaumont Genealogy – https://www.youtube.com/@Beaumont-Genealogy

• Carole McCulloch – https://www.youtube.com/@essentialgenealogy2.0

• Randy Seaver’s Blog, AI Category – https://www.geneamusings.com/search/label/Artificial%20Intelligence

• Many of the popular Genealogy Channels and Blogs have episodes specific to AI (Amy Johnson Crow, etc.) Just do a search. List your favorites in the comments!

• Family Tree Webinars – https://familytreewebinars.com (There is a modest fee.)

• The Genealogy and Artificial Intelligence (AI) group on Facebook

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How do you remember a cousin on her birthday week, just 11 months after she left us for wherever good cousins go next?

We're past the shocky stuff. We don't need tears or maudlin memories. I'm thinking something closer to a wink. A nod. Maybe ... an Easter Egg?

Not those expensive chicken eggs that are so hard to find at the store. What is going on with egg prices, anyway? First they said it was Covid. Then they said, oh, it's avian flu.

What next? I smell a conspiracy.

The only thing my family loves more than a good conspiracy is a good bargain. I'm not sure if we got the bargain bug from Grace, Elmer, or both. Grace and Elmer Olson are my grandparents. They had 14 grandchildren. We lost one cousin early. Each generation has this struggle. Grace and Elmer lost two children: Fred near birth, and little Johnny when he was 14 months old. Grace's parents lost young John at age 3. Based on this, I refused to use the name "John" for any of my children. It just felt unlucky.

But I digress. Back to the eggs.

There's a type of Easter Egg that doesn't come from chickens. It's a hidden message, often in software, included as a joke or bonus. So I sat down to make a video with this Easter Egg in mind. Could I embed one, as a quiet nod to our lost cousin on her birthday? Something gentle, humorous, that she would get if she were here?

At her wedding, when it was time for the kiss, Cousin Carol and her new husband turned their backs to the audience, donned some silly glasses with fake noses and mustaches, then turned back around for the kiss. It was corny and fun. The wedding crowd cheered.

At her memorial service, our entire family put on similar glasses and turned around to face the rest of the congregation. Yes, Cousin Carol, an entire church full of people burst into laughter at your memorial service. You would have loved that.

So I decided to find a way to get those glasses into my video. Viola'. Easter Egg.

The glasses in the video aren’t just a joke. They’re a way of saying, We remember. We celebrate. We love. And we find ways to laugh, even in the face of loss.

Thirteen grandkids outlived my grandparents, but the 2020's have not been kind to us. First we lost Ron, then Carol, and a few months later, Pam.

When we lost that first little cousin years ago, it was a sudden shock, a one-off accident. But this recent thing where we lose one after another, and then another? It's a different deal. It's stealthy. It's relentless. It nags at the edges of our thoughts until one day we realize, holy bleeping sheep, we're the Old Folks now.

There's an interesting responsibility that comes with being one of the Old Folks. You need to help the younger generations learn to say good-bye with love and humor. In our family we try to do that by telling stories, poking fun at ourselves, and, maybe, with the occasional Easter Egg.

So this week, as I sift through photos, stories, and AI-generated reports, there's also just a little something extra—a hidden wink in the video, just for Carol. Because that's how we say, "We remember you."

But wait, there's just one catch. How will I even get my family to watch this? I'm competing with Tik Tok, Miss Rachel, and Spring Break!

Yes, some will watch out of loyalty. But there is no better time to learn to advertise than with your own family. My family loves puzzles and mysteries. So I can work with that.

• Perhaps I should start with a different text to each of the older grandchildren. "10 brownie points for you if you can tell me the answer to this mystery: What year was the corn flakes photo taken?" And for my grandson: “Do you think this is real, or AI?”

• For adult cousins? I could ask something like: “What book am I hiding behind?” Because the next generation may not realize that this is Grandma's wedding book. Grace and Elmer met at the home of Carl Rasmussen in April 1913. I know, because she says so, right here, in her pretty handwriting, which I would be happy to show them, if they ask …

  

I wish we could have met Grandma. I loved Gramps, but I have a sneaking suspicion he was a lot less gruff when she was around. Maybe Carol and Ron and Pam are somewhere with her now. And with Gramps. Gruff old Gramps.

I have never been up to the old ranch where they first lived in South Dakota. Perhaps I'll get there someday. But Spearfish, Deadwood, Belle Fourche, all those areas in the Black Hills just south of the ranch? Beautiful! If you ever get a chance to visit, go!

Here's the story, slightly late, for 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks, week 10: Siblings.

Some quick notes about the video:

• All photos are family photos except the video of the McGuffin boys, which was created from a photo but turned into a video by Kling AI. (Shown above.)

• ChatGPT can be accessed via voice or text. I used both, interchangeably, depending on what I was doing. The voice in the video was generated by ElevenLabs, but the words themselves all came from ChatGPT.

• I am a big fan of some of the pre-defined GPTs in ChatGPT that are created by Steve Little and Mark Thompson. They make this tool much easier to use.

  • See Mark's website here: https://makingfamilyhistory.com

  • Steve's blog here: https://aigenealogyinsights.com/blog/

  • Both places have links to their joint podcast.

• GPTs are pre-written sets of instructions within ChatGPT. In the video I used Mark Thompsons Historical Photo Analyzer GPT.

  • Log in to ChatGPT and search for this using the Explore GPTs option.

  • Upload your photo. Let it tell you its base information, then if you want, ask additional questions.

  • ChatGPT can provide interesting and useful feedback, and it can sometimes draw some very bizarre and incorrect conclusions, so I treat it just like an opinion from a person. You'll see me doing that in the video. I always question it. I never assume it's correct.

    • Here's what's cool about Mark Thompson's Historical Photo Analyzer. He has it all set up to analyze the photo in a nice little table. Here's an example: (Note how it thinks Great Grandma is not wearing shoes ; )

      

  • I also use the new ChatGPT Deep Research functionality in the video to get a report on Sheep Ranching in South Dakota homesteads in the 1900-1920 time frame. Here’s the report: https://chatgpt.com/share/67d24f72-a464-8002-824d-a8887d376a1b. See this article by Mark Humphries for more information on Deep Research. (I am still figuring out how to use it. I would say right now I’m not a pro!)

    Since I'm not a trained researcher, I'm not qualified to grade these against high quality research reports. It appears to me that they show some promise as starting points for secondary sources that aren't behind paywalls, and they provide links to further information that might have been hard for me to find on my own. (In particular I noticed links to places within Internet Archives and newspaper sites like Chronicling America.) I found it particularly interesting that sheep ranching became much less financially viable at the end of World War 1. I'm not certain if that's when my Olson Great Grandparents found themselves in financial difficulty or not. I know that at some point sheep ranching became a problem for them. The report points to both weather and war trends that might help me understand their situation better.

Until next time, happy hunting. Go find some family stories.

My mother's 105th birthday was last Sunday, and I realize I’ve lived without her voice for longer than I lived with it.

The human voice is peculiar in how it imprints on our memory. I remember my mother's face from photographs, her handwriting from letters, but her voice? Over time the sound faded.

The Secret in the Cookie Tin

Family secrets usually bring to mind images of illicit lovers, unknown siblings, or mysterious inheritances. But sometimes the most profound secrets are mundane treasures, hidden in plain sight and forgotten. Like voices captured on magnetic tape, tucked away in a Danish butter cookie tin.

These tins were common in many American households back in the 1950’s. After the cookies were eaten, the tins were perfect for storing small items - especially sewing supplies, buttons, photos, or in this case, reel-to-reel tapes.

My cousin Jo found this while cleaning out her parents' home. Inside were three reel-to-reel tapes from the 1950s—recordings my mother and aunt mailed back and forth when Mom was teaching in another town.

This was their version of FaceTime—a way to bridge the distance between sisters.

If you've watched the video above, you've already heard part of this story. But there's more to it than what I could fit into a short video. (Note to family: if you didn’t watch the very end, you missed a longer clip of her voice ; )

The Time Capsule

When my aunt and mother purchased those reel-to-reel recorders in the early 1950s, they were going all in on the latest gear. These weren’t cheap gadgets—they represented significant investments.

Can you imagine my mother explaining why she needed this expensive new device? When her friends said, “Why not just write a letter,” maybe she used the same justifications we use today when we upgrade our phones.

"It helps me stay connected."

"It's an investment in relationships."

The Lost Box

During my married years, things tended to disappear. We had kids. We moved. Life happened in that messy way it always does. And somewhere between Atlanta and Seattle, a box of tapes vanished—including the only recording I had of Mom and me singing "Silent Night" together, her soprano blending with my alto.

And so, for decades, her voice was gone.

Until Jo's discovery.

The Resurrection Process

That's my mother in 1954, talking to my little cousins about what song to sing next. Her voice is younger than I remember—she would have been in her early 30s. The tape quality is primitive by today's standards, but it's unmistakably her.

What struck me most about hearing her voice again was how it activated memories I didn't know I still had. The cadence of her speech, the way she emphasized certain words—these weren't things I could have described before hearing the tape, but they were instantly familiar once I did.

She sounds exactly like a 2nd grade teacher, doesn't she? That was her favorite grade to teach. 2nd. Because the kids were old enough to wipe their own noses but still young enough to be sweet.

I found myself wanting more, so I did what any slightly tech-obsessed family historian would do: I extracted every snippet of her voice from those tapes, cleaned them up using audio processing tools, and then fed them into an AI voice cloning program.

The AI version isn't perfect, but when I hear it, I hear her.

Here’s another example:

From the tape:

From the voice clone:

The Ethics of Digital Resurrection

What do people think of the idea of cloning her voice? Some find it comforting; others are unsettled. I understand their discomfort. In a world increasingly concerned about deepfakes and digital manipulation, resurrecting voices raises legitimate ethical questions.

But I see a distinction between recreation and preservation. I'm not creating new content or putting words in my mother's mouth that she never said. I'm extending the too-few recordings I have, allowing the software to fill in what time and circumstance erased.

Is this fundamentally different from restoring an old photograph? Or a letter? Or telling stories about someone who's gone? I'm not sure. The technology is new, but the human impulse is ancient. We want to remember.

What fascinates me most about this experience is the progression across time, from reel-to-reel to AI. I wonder what my grandchildren will use to pass down their voices for future generations. Will today’s voice cloning tools seem as primitive to them as those reel-to-reel tapes seem to us now?

The Unexpected Gift

Family secrets aren't always dark or scandalous. Sometimes they're unexpected gifts, waiting to be discovered in cookie tins and cardboard boxes. Like Mom’s voice, caught through one innovation and resurrected through another.

I've already used her AI voice to read an autograph she wrote in a classmate's yearbook. And I have a stack of her old letters. I wonder how they would sound.

The experiment continues.

And while some might find this all just a little bit weird, to me it's another way of saying: I remember you. I miss you. Your voice still matters.

What voices from your past would you want to hear again? How are you preserving your own voice for future generations? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Technical note for those interested: I used Auphonic.com for audio cleanup and ElevenLabs for voice cloning. Both offer free options for limited use.

Friday I released my latest video. You can watch it here:

This particular post is meant to accompany that video. It will still make sense on its own but will be more clear if you watch first and then read this afterwards.

Church archives can be a gold mine of information. It depends on the types of publications a particular denomination published, but they may contain mentions of the standard items you expect to get from church records and, added bonus, news articles that mention your ancestors at various other events.

In the video I find a photo of myself at age 10, a detailed list of how much money some relatives made from selling books years earlier, and a poem written by my dad during World War II.

But how did I know this was Dad’s? It’s just a publication with a poem and his name. There’s no biography. And “William Carver” isn’t terribly unique.

Near Matches

The Familysearch research wiki explains some of the pitfalls of looking at online records collections. Sometimes when you find an article containing your relative’s name, you assume it is yours, but maybe it’s a “near match” that isn’t really a match. For instance, perhaps the name is the same, but once you look more closely, you find that dates don’t match up.

Alternatively, sometimes the name isn’t an exact match. It has a typo, a nickname, or old-fashioned spelling. But it might actually be the person you’re looking for. And if a person is completely missing, that does not automatically mean that person wasn’t in the area. Sometimes the record set is incomplete. Maybe a few pages didn’t get scanned into the system for some reason.

Organizational Tactics

The wiki goes on to suggest some some ways to help with verification. Before you start hunting, round up all your information. Open your family tree. Gather your notes. The more you know, the easier it is to verify. Try to find the full name, the names of spouses, as many of the birth, marriage, and death dates as you know, names and approximate birthdays for the children, residences, occupations, and military service. (See FamilySearch Link at end of post.)

Sometimes when I’m searching through archives I don’t have much of this information. I’ll come across a name, and I’m uncertain, so I put it in a special “maybe” pile, to be re-evaluated as more facts surface.

Case Study 1: Self-Verification in Church Publications

The simplest verification was finding myself in the North Pacific Union Gleaner. The photo showed me in a scout uniform at Mount Tabor Church, wearing some super dandy glasses. I verified this was me through:

• Direct visual identification. At first glance I recognized myself and both of the other people in the picture.

• Personal memories. I remembered the location, the scout meetings, the time frame, and the fact that those glasses were always falling down my nose.

Search for More Matches

But let’s say a descendant finds this photo 50 years from now, without the context I have. That’s where it is useful to search for, and examine, as many results as possible.

In this case, if my descendant looks through all four of the articles that show up when you search for my name, that lucky little researcher will find another photo from the same year. It’s my baptism photo and shows my glasses and haircut from a different angle. The baptism date also coincides with the baptism date in my family tree which, I hope, my descendant will be able to find.

Case Study 2: Verifying Grandma Grace

For my grandmother's death notice, I verified by matching this notice with other sources:

• The death notice details exactly matched her official death certificate (dates and locations).

• There was also a second death notice in a sister publication that provided several more details, including the name of the church she attended, her husband’s name, number of children, and burial location. Each piece of information aligned with known family records and stories.

Case Study 3: Great Grandma Mary McGuffin

The first two cases were pretty easy, right? I recognized myself, and Grandma’s details all lined up with existing records.

But what about Great Grandma? In the video, I showed a couple of notices that said things like, “Mary McGuffin is selling religious books around South Dakota.”

These articles mentioned name and location. South Dakota was sparsely populated, Mary McGuffin isn’t the most common name, and Mary’s religion isn’t the primary religion of the area. These facts all help, but that doesn’t mean I can jump to the conclusion that this Mary is my great grandmother. Did my Mary roam the countryside selling books? How can I find out?

Here’s where it’s good to have your family tree open, so you can refer to it for name changes. It also helps to have some insider knowledge of the church your ancestor attended.

What did I find?

Verification of her occupation from other articles.

Let’s start with her death notice. By late 1922 my grandmother’s family had moved to Washington state, and it appears Great Grandma tagged along. In 1923 she married David Houser. A search for Mary Houser provides her death notice a decade later. This lines up with her death certificate. It mentions that she was a church member for 45 years and says she spent many years in the colporteur work in The Dakotas.

Small side note: This contains a few terms that my sweet little descendants might not understand when they search for Great Grandma years from now. So here’s a quick decoder.

1. Walla Walla Sanitarium: A hospital. This church loved its sanitariums. Note that in the video, my dad and uncle worked at the Portland Sanitarium and Hospital.

2. Colporteur: Someone who travels from place to place selling or giving away religious materials, particularly Bibles and faith-based literature. This church also loved its missionaries and colporteurs.

3. The Dakotas: A quick way to talk about both North and South Dakota, two states in the midwest of the United States. At one time they were both part of the Dakota territory.

Geographic Verification

From other records, I know that the tiny town where Great Grandma lived in 1915 was called Line, South Dakota. This place was so small the “Welcome” and “Good-bye” signs probably shared the same post. The truth is, I’m not even sure exactly where it was, because I can’t find it on any maps now. I’m guessing it was near Cave Hills, but that’s just a guess.

Some of the “Book Selling” reports mentioned Line:

• “I am sending you this report with good courage. Sister Mary E. McGuffin, Line, S. D.” Northern Union Reaper, Vol. 14 No. 24, June 24, 1919

• "Sister Mary McGuffin reports three new Sabbath keepers in Line, S. Dak." - The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 92 No. 21, Thursday, April 29, 1915

While it’s certainly possible to have more than one Mary McGuffin selling books for the church in The Dakotas during this time frame, would there be more than one from Line? Well, it’s not impossible, but it doesn’t seem likely.

Case Study 4: Orland William (Bill) Carver

Verifying my father's records helped fill in more details on his timeline. This is another situation where William Carver isn’t a particularly unique name, and Dad moved around a bit.

Not only that, the Adventist Yearbooks for the years 1951-1955 do list him under “Church School Teachers” in the midwest, but for 1951 it also lists another William Carver under “Ministers.”

Fortunately, I do have a lot of oral tradition. Dad told stories. He wrote many of them down. I know he was not a minister. When reviewing articles for this time frame in the midwest, I need to be careful to note when the articles are speaking of a teacher vs. a minister.

1934: Selling Books

• Oral History: Colporteur records matched his stories about selling books during the Depression, riding an electric bike from town to town.

• Recent corroborating stories: Some of the cousins I’ve connected with in recent years have mentioned how Uncle Bill gave them some of these books as gifts.

1943: Published Poem During WWII

This one is a bit harder. I paged through the entire issue, past a piece entitled “Lads, Lassies, and Liquor” and a full column explaining why you might want to become an auto mechanic. But alas, there is no bio for the poet.

So how can I verify?

• Oral History: He told me he wrote stories and poems for these publications during the war, but that he no longer had copies of what he published.

• Additional articles: One article announces that he will be the new school teacher and mentions that he has published 12 pieces in various church publications.

• The writing in this poem matches his style, and I have hundreds of pages of his writing for comparison. This is inherently subjective, of course, but when I combine it with the other evidence, I’m comfortable with it.

  

1955: Teaching School

• Visual verification: His photo. I mean, ok, that’s him. If my future descendants see the photo, they should have plenty of other photos to compare it with.

• Oral history. He spoke of his teaching experiences often.

• Additional articles. These all show him right where I expect him to be, teaching school in little one room situations, with something like 18 students in multiple grades.

1958: Marriage

• Dates, people, location, all corroborated by many other sources.

Making the Case: Your Verification Toolkit

When you're digging through old church magazines trying to figure out if that person is really your relative, here are some of the tricks that worked for me.

Connect the Dots

• Look for details that match up with what you already know - full names (don't forget maiden names), physical descriptions, where they lived.

• Look at the near-matches carefully. Check everything against known facts, and if you aren’t sure, put these in your “maybe” pile.

Follow the Timeline

• Make sure the dates make sense - birth, marriage, death, moves from one place to another.

• Look for logical life progressions - when you can follow someone's journey (like my father's path from book seller to teacher, mentioned in multiple publications), it helps confirm you're following the right person.

• Look for multiple records from the same time period that confirm each other - like when a church announcement, personal stories, and official documents all place someone in the same location doing the same thing.

Look at the Bigger Picture

• Find patterns - if multiple sources mention the same job or the same move to a new state, that's useful evidence

• Be honest about what you're not sure about - sometimes you have to say "probably" instead of "definitely"

Think of verification as a family puzzle - one piece might look right, but when you find three or four that fit perfectly, that's when you know you're onto something.

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Links For Further Research

If you have ancestors in this particular church, check out the Adventist Archives here: https://documents.adventistarchives.org/default.aspx

For relatives with different faith backgrounds, check the FamilySearch Wiki page below. (This is for the U.S., but you should be able to find other countries with similar pages, as needed.) https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/How_to_Find_Church_Records_in_the_United_States#

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